


Failed Safe

by Evil_Little_Dog



Series: Brave New World [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon - First Anime, Challenge Response, Community: fma_fic_contest, F/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-30
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evil_Little_Dog/pseuds/Evil_Little_Dog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary:  Roy can’t stay, even if he wants to.<br/>Disclaimer:  No no, never, never, uh uh uh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failed Safe

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "use a lyric of a song in your story" challenge. I chose the song "Kayleigh" by Marillion. The line is highlighted in the story.

“You’re coming home with me.” Lieutenant Hawkeye had brooked no argument when I was at the hospital. “You’ll need additional care, and assistance getting to your follow up appointments.”

So I had stayed at her apartment, with her dog, and her personal items, and she’d taken care of me. Put up with me. Listened to my fever dreams and woke me from nightmares left over from burning people in Ishbal, from murdering two doctors, from an automail monstrosity threatening my life after I’d already fought a homunculus and watched the creature kill the child who called it ‘Father’.

It had been easy. Without the military trappings that normally surrounded us, we were just a man and a woman, with far too many emotions tangled up between them. I wasn’t sure when it had moved beyond being comrades at arms, to friendship, to something even more. I knew the feelings had always been there, trapped beneath uniforms and ranks and fraternization rules. It felt good to release them, finally.

But there were things I realized I was putting off, like a letter to a family in Rezembool. I tried to write it, to send my condolences, but the words wouldn’t come. Everything I needed to say to the Rockbells dried up when I put pen to paper.

I thought if I returned to work – but that didn’t help, either, I found out. It exhausted me, sitting at a desk, and I couldn’t stand the sympathetic – and the not so sympathetic looks. I couldn’t answer the questions my own staff most wanted to know: Edward and Alphonse Elric’s whereabouts were unknown.

I’d failed my staff. I hadn’t protected the people under me, letting one of my own go off to wage a battle without any back up. I hadn’t been able to protect a child in the house of the Fuhrer of Amestris. And I found I couldn’t tell another child that her two best friends weren’t coming home, and were considered missing in action.

Riza had been at work when I’d packed my bag. I’d left her a note, one that didn’t say enough, might’ve said too much. The cab dropped me off at the train station, and I climbed out, not even looking back the way I’d come.

The ticket was waiting for me, a one way to Briggs. I took it, tapping the paper against my palm. I wondered about the note, how Riza would feel when she found it.

The train whistle shrieked, a warning to board. I closed my eye. It was too late to reconsider. I was expected. I climbed into a passenger car and took my seat.

The words I’d written rolled in my head in time to the clacking of the wheels on the rails: _We said our love would last forever, so how did it come to this bitter end?_ I already knew the answer, though, and the blame fell squarely on me. In the end, I’d failed them all.

X X X


End file.
